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Hundreds of high school teaching jobs could be cut as the Toronto public board grapples with a $55-million deficit, according to a staffing report that also recommends cuts to secretaries and vice-principals.

Last year, the Toronto District School Board axed 200 secondary teaching positions because of a drop in enrolment, and this year proposes a loss of 248.

“It’s very frustrating to continually make cuts — it never ends,” said Etobicoke Trustee Chris Glover. “At some point, trustees are going to throw up their hands.”

“High schools are taking a huge hit,” added another trustee — from teachers to secretaries to hall monitors.

While overall enrolment is on the rise in the board — Canada’s largest, and the seventh biggest in North America — it is fuelled by a boom in the elementary grades which has yet to filter up. Right now, it has more than 80,000 secondary students and 5,575 high school teachers.

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On Wednesday morning, Premier Kathleen Wynne told reporters that it’s up to the board to determine whether it needs to lay off teachers and support workers to balance its budget.

“School boards have to make their budget decisions as they see fit. I believe in school boards,” said Wynne, a former TDSB trustee.

“I believe in the ability of school boards to deliver the programs that are most relevant and in the way that they need to locally and so every year there are budget discussions, and as I said, there will be many issues that will be put on the table at the TDSB.”

Education Minister Liz Sandals noted that “over the last 10 or 15 years the birth rate is going down” so fewer schools are needed.

“The reality is, the student population is declining because the birth rate is declining. That is the reality that school boards need to manage,” said Sandals.

Even if secondary enrolment is temporarily on the decline, losing staff “always has an impact on what programs schools can offer. They scramble around to find people to offer core subjects” but often the classes teachers feel the most passionate about can be lost, said Laurie Green, a concerned mother of four whose son attends Etobicoke Collegiate.

“Losing those teachers — the fewer adults you have in the building, the less opportunity you have to engage kids,” Green also said.

Indeed, the report notes that by this fall, about half of all Toronto high schools will have fewer than 800 students, and 40 per cent fewer than 500. “Schools that have smaller student populations will have challenges offering a full breadth of programs,” it says.

While secondary schools take a hit, elementary schools are poised to add teachers and early childhood educators, mostly because of full-day kindergarten.

Trustees will discuss the staff recommendations at a committee meeting this Thursday, and probably vote on them at next week’s board meeting.

The projected decline in enrolment is not believed to have much to do with the labour turmoil in Ontario public high schools and the resulting loss of extracurricular activities, to which teachers are just starting to return. “We’re hoping that (extracurriculars) won’t be a factor” when final enrolment numbers come in, said board spokesperson Shari Schwartz-Maltz.

She said the loss of secondary positions is also due, in part, to the board moving to slightly higher student-teacher ratios. Currently standing at 21.4 to 1, the ratio is moving to 21.7 to 1.

The province provides funding for a 22 to 1 ratio.

Schwartz-Maltz said the staffing report tries to deal with funding issues in a creative way. “We are doing things in a different way — there’s only x amount of money in the pot,” she said.

The estimated $55-million deficit is about half of what it was last year, when the $109-million shortfall was the biggest the board has ever faced.

To balance the books then, trustees cut 430 education assistants, 134 school secretaries, 17 vice-principals, 200 high school teachers, 10 caretakers and six hall safety monitors. It also slashed senior administration by 10 per cent.

Many of the education assistants were offered an opportunity to retrain as early childhood educators to work in full-day kindergarten classrooms. Roughly one-third — or 150 — have done so.

This year, the board is also looking to also chop a number of school librarians and guidance counsellors — mainly in elementary schools — as well as music teachers who travel from school to school. The staffing cuts would eliminate about $27 million, or half of the deficit.

Glover blames full-day kindergarten for much of the board’s financial woes, noting the government is not fully funding staff or classrooms for the new program, so it “leaves us with an enormous shortfall each year.”

Schwartz-Maltz said the suggested cuts to elementary guidance will affect Grade 7 and 8 students, who would mainly receive help with high school course selection. The board is instead proposing to train their classroom teachers.

The board is not cutting social workers, who help students with mental health issues, she added.

Toronto student Trustee Hirad Zafari said the board will have to make sure the loss of staff doesn’t cause problems in high schools.

“I hope that the board is able to deal with those budget cuts and the lower enrolment,” he said.

Among the staffing recommendations made in the report:

A boost in elementary teachers, mostly because of full-day kindergarten, from the current 8,008 to 8,139.

A cut of 25 full-time elementary school librarians, but with assurances that each school will have at least a half-time one.

The loss of 20 full-time guidance positions in elementary, and 46.5 in high schools. Green said she’s opposed to any such cuts, given the level of “awareness of mental health issues” among youth.

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